“The Grande Dame of the Shore” - Is The Cavalier Hotel a Phoenix?

Every building has its ups and downs, from the grand opening to slumps in the economy or fashion. Over time every building needs to be spruced up and brought up to date, if only in the bathrooms and kitchens. The Cavalier in Virginia Beach is no exception to the cycle of a buildings life. I last visited this hotel in 2003 when it still retained many of its old features, for better or for worse. Since that time it has been closed for renovation, which is progressing to a not too distance re-opening. As my visit would not reflect what will be seen when it reopens in 2018, I will focus instead of the history and features of the hotel when it was "The Grand Dame of the Shore" and only hope that much of the historic fabric and character of this hotel as well as its Southern cuisine and hospitality is retained in its new vision and not lost to whim or flights of fancy.

Cavalier Hotel Luggage Label

The architects for The Cavalier Hotel were the regionally known and prolific firm of Neff & Thompson. Neff & Thompson was active in Virginia from 1902 to 1932. Clarence Amos Neff Sr. was an architect and engineer who began his career in Norfolk in 1898 after obtaining his architecture degree from Columbia University. He also served as president of the Norfolk Federal Savings and the Princess Anne Country Club. Thomas P. Thompson  was partners with Neff until Thompson became the Norfolk city manager. The two partners designed approximately 600 projects including many office buildings, personal residences, country clubs, and large scale commercial projects. Some of the most prominent and still extant include the Country Club of Virginia clubhouse in Richmond, Maury High School, and the Virginia Theater, now Granby Theater. Finally, Clarence Neff was the primary architect for the early campus of William and Mary in Norfolk (now Old Dominion University), including the main Education Building and Foreman Field. He also designed Granby High School and Center Theater and Arena Municipal Auditorium. Additionally a number of prominent commercial buildings still stand, including many in Norfolk. 

Ariel View of the Cavalier Hotel, Beach Club and Grounds before the surrounding area was developed

Opened in 1927, the seven story "Y" shaped building is which every possible aspect of the design was chosen to reflect the relationship of the hotel to the ocean including views of the ocean from many public areas, a salt water swimming pool, salt water bath spigots in each room, and even the central cupola invoking a light house. The exterior evokes Classical Revival design and Jeffersonian concepts, many directly inspired by elements from Monticello and the University of Virginia, and echoed in the name of the hotel itself. The hotel is approached from walkways up the terraced hill or along a boulevard driveway from the side and, despite nearly eighty years of large scale hotel development in Virginia Beach, still offers the most commanding position on the ocean front. With the exterior much the same as when it was built, and prior to the restoration,the prominent interior public areas retained much of their historic features and character.

 Main Entrance to The Cavalier

 

The interior of the hotel featured several largely intact, elaborately decorated public areas. The entry lobby, or ‘Rotunda,’ featured its historic cast terrazzo stair with iron railings which has a central section gaining access up to the main lobby area, and two side wing flights down to the Hunt Club. The swimming pool and attached loggia featured a historic floor plan with some historic materials. The two balconies, the shape of the pool, and the metal roof support system all appeared in early postcards. The pool loggia fed into three long runs of enclosed porches of equal proportions before turning southwest on the rear end of the hotel, where it became an enclosed dining porch attached to the traditional formal dining room, the Pocahontas Room, on its southeast and southwest sides. These arcaded and colonnaded porches were in part inspired by the Jefferson designed covered walkways connecting the pavilions on The Lawn at the University of Virginia.

Main Lobby of The Cavalier

The Pocahontas Room had served as the formal dining room since The Cavalier was constructed. It is now know by the modern word "Becca" giving no reference to any historical connection of the Cavalier's past. 

Pocahontas Dining Room Menu circa 1937 

Pocahontas Dining Room Menu from 1949

The ballroom was in its historic location but non-historic partition walls had altered the layout somewhat and it was used as an entry area for the non-historic ballroom addition.

The most prominent historic room on the main floor, and the most intact room before the restoration, was the Raleigh Room, or Lounge as it was called originally, located opposite the Pocahontas Room at the end of the lobby hallway and running parallel to the pool area. The Raleigh Room retained its checkerboard terrazzo floor, its large, square support beams with historic plaster capitals, the historic chair rails, and fluted pilasters along the porch wall. 

Sir Walter Raleigh Lounge of The Cavalier

The hotel originally featured 200 guest rooms, each twelve by twelve feet. These rooms were appointed with hot water, cold water, sea water, and ice water spigots. During my visit in 2003 it was clear that our room was actually two rooms converted into one room, doubling the original size. However, six historic rooms on the ocean side of the hotel originally did have attached sitting rooms. 

The architects for The Cavalier Hotel were the regionally known and prolific firm of Neff & Thompson. Neff & Thompson was active in Virginia from 1902 to 1932. Clarence Amos Neff Sr. was an architect and engineer who began his career in Norfolk in 1898 after obtaining his architecture degree from Columbia University. He also served as president of the Norfolk Federal Savings and the Princess Anne Country Club. Thomas P. Thompson  was partners with Neff until Thompson became the Norfolk city manager. The two partners designed approximately 600 projects including many office buildings, personal residences, country clubs, and large scale commercial projects. Some of the most prominent and still extant include the Country Club of Virginia clubhouse in Richmond, Maury High School, and the Virginia Theater, now Granby Theater. Finally, Clarence Neff was the primary architect for the early campus of William and Mary in Norfolk (now Old Dominion University), including the main Education Building and Foreman Field. He also designed Granby High School and Center Theater and Arena Municipal Auditorium. Additionally a number of prominent commercial buildings still stand, including many in Norfolk. 

The Cavalier Hotel featured the still relatively new concept of reinforced concrete construction. Neff & Thompson pioneered this construction method in Tidewater Virginia, utilizing it as early as 1906 in the Monticello Arcade. Also, the unusual V-shape of the Seaboard Air Line Railway Building can be seen as a precursor to The Cavalier Y-shaped design just one year later. The builder of The Cavalier was Roland Brinkley of Baker & Brinkley, a builder for many years in the Tidewater area. The Cavalier was the firm’s most important project, but they completed numerous commercial projects, particularly in Norfolk. The best known of these was the now demolished City Market, which dominated an entire city block in downtown for decades.

The official process of creating this new hotel began in 1925 with the creation of the Virginia Beach Resort and Hotel Corporation and a call for suggestions from the public to name the new hotel. By this time the site and design had been selected. On May 9, 1926, the cornerstone was laid with a formal ceremony attended by Lieutenant-Governor Junius E. West speaking on “Virginia in the Future.”  In early 1927 in anticipation of the opening of The Cavalier Hotel, it was announced that the radio station WSEA would be launched as the “voice of The Cavalier.” The 500-watt radio station was located on the first floor of the hotel and run by the Radio Corporation of Virginia. The station could be heard initially for several hundred miles and eventually was broadcast nationally carrying the many bands that played at the hotel.

When The Cavalier Hotel finally opened there was a week of events to celebrate the completion. The festivities opened with a ceremony and evening dinner and entertainment. There were daylight fireworks depicting life-sized Cavaliers on horseback to accompany the first official flag-raising at the hotel. Architect T.P. Thompson was toast master at the evening event which included a beefsteak dinner, elaborate decorations, a jazz band and a “display of bathing costumes by Saks’ of Fifth Avenue” by New York models around the new saltwater swimming pool.

Service Plate from the Pocahontas Room of The Cavalier

An account of the style and inspirations for the design of the hotel from the time of its opening described an exterior “in that spirit of Southern Colonial” with inspiration from locations such as Woodlawn as well as The Lawn at the University of Virginia and Jefferson’s home of Monticello. The concept of the decorative water tower atop the hotel was borrowed from James Gibbs and his work at places such as the Church of St. Mary-Le-Strand at Aldwych in London. The plaster ceiling in the Rotunda lobby was inspired by the ceiling in the Moses Myers House in Norfolk. The terrazzo floors and old pine wood trim were meant to invoke Colonial era homes.

The landscape design and features were also meant to invoke the Colonial period of early Virginia, specifically the plantation houses of Shirley, Brandon, Yorktown, and Westover. Specific examples of this influence were seen in the serpentine walls, tall posts, and formal landscaping at the entrance, now obscured with the "McMansions" filling what remained of the hotel grounds. The brick walkways, sloping front lawn, and sunken garden, now either destroyed with "McMansion" development, or crowded by that contrsuctions as part of the
"restoration" harkened back to early Virginia estates. Now gone, there were many old pines and cypress left around the hotel, inspired by Magnolia Gardens of Old Charleston.

Garden of The Cavalier

Brochures and other hotel materials from that period reveal that The Cavalier Hotel encompassed several hundred acres and incorporated numerous activities and events for their guests into their annual schedules. For many years the hotel hosted the Virginia Top Shooting Association Tournament as well as several hunting and shooting activities being available to all guests on a daily basis. Every spring at the end of May the hotel held The Annual Beach Club opening down below Atlantic Avenue at its club facility. The hotel also sponsored daily or weekly concerts, plays, card games, and other entertainments. A lengthy booklet published soon after opening described an incredible number and variety of activities. Dining options included the Captain John Smith Grill and the more formal Pocahontas dining room which was paired with an enclosed glass porch dining area. Relaxing in the hotel and nearby facilities might include the richly decorated and furnished Sir Walter Raleigh Lounge, the Ocean Front Sun Porch, the glass enclosed saltwater Pool, the Ballroom, and The Cavalier Riding Club lounge. There were also barbers and hairdressers, shops, a telegraph office, and a small stock trading office. Outdoor activities included golf at The Cavalier Golf and Country Club or at the nearby Princess Anne Country Club, and there was miniature golf in the sunken garden abutting the hotel. Several holes on The Cavalier course were modeled after famous holes at well-known golf courses around the world. By 1931 The Cavalier Hotel had added a second golf course designed by New York golf architect Charles H. Banks. Additionally there was horseback riding through many miles and numerous different trails. For the hunter there were several different bird hunts as well as the Princess Anne Hunt just one mile away, and the Cavalier Hotel was home to an Annual Horse Show. Guests could also indulge in archery, trap shooting, tennis, and salt water bathing at the ocean side club or the hotel pool.  And there were, of course, several boating opportunities sponsored by the hotel.

View from The Cavalier of the Atlantic Ocean, showing the Beach Club, Pony Ring, and Tennis Courts on land lost to development of the Renovated Hotel

Former First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was a regular visitor and Eleanor Roosevelt visited with the Girl Scouts. Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Betty Grable, Frank Sinatra, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald all visited The Cavalier Hotel. U.S Presidents visiting The Cavalier included Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. Sam Snead won the Virginia Open at The Cavalier Golf Course in 1935. Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and all of the nationally known band leaders came and played. The hotel was also one of the most popular honeymoon destinations in the country.

Three Har-Tru Tennis Courts at The Cavalier on land lost to development of the Renovated Hotel

General manager Sydney Banks claimed that The Cavalier “became the largest hirer of bands in the United States…a different one every week.” The Cavalier was the third hotel in the country to have national broadcasts and on June 10, 1927, Norfolk Mayor Tyler was the first American to greet Charles Lindbergh returning from his transatlantic flight via The Cavalier radio station, WSEA.

The Cavalier Hotel continued to be a great success with few dips in its popularity or profitability for fifteen years until October 3, 1942. At this time the United States Navy commandeered the hotel to serve as a radar training school. Nearly every available space was converted into classroom space and living quarters. By the time the hotel was returned to its owners and manager Sydney Banks it required substantial renovations. The Cavalier Hotel also faced the loss of the “Cavalier” rail service to the hotel from the Midwest as a result of the surge in automobile use. Additionally, after three years of being out of service, the hotel had fallen from the top lists of wealthy travelers. The hotel eventually failed and became a private club for a time in the 1950s and 1960s before returning to service as a hotel. Through the second half of the twentieth century the hotel has remained open for most of the years, but off-and-on renovations of mixed effectiveness and the decline of the luxury beach hotel market has left The Cavalier Hotel in a precarious position for several generations. Over the same period, the acreage associated with the hotel diminished as the hotel’s fortunes declined and land was subdivided for additional commercial and residential development. Today the Cavalier is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and one of the Historic Hotels of America, an official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for recognizing and celebrating the finest Historic Hotels.

And this is where the hotel was in 2003. It retained much of its historic fabric, and a nice portion of the grounds around the hotel, including croquet courts and tennis courts on the lawns leading to the Ocean. The Beach Club was closed, but the offered beach chair service on the beach. The public rooms of the hotel were classic architecture fitting for the "Grande Dame of the South." But the private rooms of the hotel were in need of a face lift.

Now Gold Key Public Hospitality Resources has undertaken a $75 Million Dollar renovation of this hotel. They have spent time and effort to restore the fireplace of the Hunt Room, but have also "modernized" the Sir Walter Raleigh Lounge. This renovation is not without its monetary costs. It seems close to 50% of the remaining grounds of the hotel, including both sides of the driveway and both sides of the iconic lawn from the hotel to the ocean, have been developed with a gated community of 81 homes, closing off what open space remained around the hotel. Gone too is the Pocahontas Room, now restyled the Becca Restaurant.

It is a delicate balance which must be maintained in redeveloping a property so that it can continue into the future not only as a historical feature of the skyline, but also as a viable business. I hope that the Cavalier manages to preserve the history and tradition of its past, rather than creating a commercial space which could exist anywhere, without regard for the Southern hospitality and charms of the original Cavalier Hotel. Only time will tell.